Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Mona Eltahawy

Quote by Mona Eltahawy

“I understand the need to defend one's headscarf -- I did it for years, even as I was privately struggling with it. It's an important defence in the face of Islamophobes and racists. I get that. But if it's done without cognisance of the lived realities of women who do not have the privilege of choice, then my interlocutors end up doing exactly what they accuse me of doing with my support of a niqab ban: silencing other women. Why the silence, as some of our women fade into black, either owing to identity politics or out of acquiescence to Salafism?”

Quote by Mona Eltahawy

Book:Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution
Create image

Work

Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

This book delves into the complex web of cultural, religious, and societal factors that shape sexual norms in the Middle East. It argues for a sexual revolution as a means to promote individual rights and gender equality in the region. more

Author

Mona Eltahawy
Mona Eltahawy

Mona Eltahawy is an Egyptian-American journalist renowned for her coverage of women's rights in the Middle East. Born on August 1, 1967, she grew up in Egypt and Saudi Arabia before moving to the United States. Eltahawy's work spans a range of topics including gender, politics, and social justice, and her writing has appeared in international media outlets such as The New York Times and The Guardian. more

You May Also Like

“The same grant programs that paid for local law enforcement agencies across the country to buy armored personnel carriers and drones have paid for Stingrays," said the ALCU's Soghoian. "Like drones, license plate readers, and biometric scanners, the Stingrays are yet another surveillance technology created by defense contractors for the military, and after years of use in war zones, it eventually trickles down to local and state agencies, paid for with DOJ and DHS money.”

DronesAcluDojApcBiometric ScannerChris SoghoianDhsLicense Plate ReadersStingray
Book:The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Warfare Program
Create image

“The irony that always amazes me when I see people up in arms about our war against Islamo-fascism is how they don’t understand that the social freedoms they take for granted will be the first casualties of Islamic influence and control. The only social liberal thinkers in the Muslim Arab Islamo-fascist world are dead ones. Women’s freedoms and their protection under the law, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and other human rights will be the first to suffer. Oh yes, sorry, I forgot. . . there will always be the ACLU to depend on to keep the radical Muslims from taking these rights away. How foolish of me. Almost lost my head there.”

AcluIslamic Extremism
Book:Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America
Create image

“Special interest politics is a simple game. A hundred people sit in a circle, each with his pocket full of pennies. A politician walks around the outside of the circle, taking a penny from each person. No one minds; who cares about a penny? When he has gotten all the way around the circle, the politician throws fifty cents down in front of one person, who is overjoyed at the unexpected windfall. The process is repeated, ending with a different person. After a hundred rounds everyone is a hundred cents poorer, fifty cents richer, and happy.”

PoliticsPublic ChoiceRent Seeking
Book:The machinery of freedom: guide to a radical capitalism
Create image

“From these definitions and axioms springs my central hypothesis: political parties in a democracy formulate policy strictly as a means of gaining votes. They do not seek to gain office in order to carry out certain preconceived policies or to serve any particular interest groups; rather they formulate policies and serve interest groups in order to gain office. Thus their social function—which is to formulate and carry out policies when in power as the government—is accomplished as a by-product of their private motive—which is to attain the income, power, and prestige of being in office. This hypothesis implies that, in a democracy, the government always acts so as to maximize the number of votes it will receive. In effect, it is an entrepreneur selling policies for votes instead of products for money. Furthermore, it must compete for votes with other parties, just as two or more oligopolists compete for sales in a market.”

GovernmentPoliticsPowerDemocracyPoliticiansPolitical ScienceOligopolyPublic Choice
Book:Theories of Democracy: A Reader
Create image